In their zeal to exploit Fridays shooting near the Empire State Building in New York City, anti-gunners are deliberately overlooking some facts and adding their own agenda items instead.

Kudos to the Seattle Times for not picking up on the rhetoric in its selection of stories about the incident to publish. Then, again, one might wonder if the Times is just playing down the event because the mass shooting that had initially been reported now has been revealed to have been caused by police gunfire, not dead gunman Jeffrey T. Johnson.

His pistol was an old Star .45-caliber semi-auto, a gun that by no stretch of anyones imagination  with the exception of the Violence Policy Center  meets the definition of assault anything. One glance at the VPCs statement about the shooting cements that organizations lack of credibility, because it contains this gem:

Today's shooter reportedly used a 45 caliber handgun to end the life of a former co-worker, offering yet another example of how the ready availability of semiautomatic handguns that can be equipped with high-capacity ammunition magazines destroy lives and make everyone less safe.Violence Policy Center

The Star has a seven-round magazine. Nobody makes a high capacity magazine for that gun. Johnson fired five rounds into his victim, 41-year-old Steve Ercolino, and did not fire again, even as he aimed the pistol at patrolmen Robert Sinishtaj and Craig Matthews.

The anti-freedom people lie all the time. The more aware know that they are lying to themselves, but justify it because it advances their agenda.

Later in the article, Mother Jones gives the definition of a "mass shooting". It includes the criteria that the shooter had to kill at least four people. While understandable, it conveniently cuts out of the data set all mass shootings where the shooter was stopped early in the event by people on the scene.

According to this every single one of the subsequent victims after the first were wounded by the police firing at the guy. Now before the police toe lickers come out of the woodwork to defend their jackbooted heroes, consider what would have happened if an a pair of armed citizens had done EXACTLY the same thing. They would have been buried UNDER the jail.

2
posted on 08/27/2012 6:22:57 AM PDT
by from occupied ga
(Your government is your most dangerous enemy)

Morn MT, not to mention the fact that these "anti-gun zealots" are in fact,,,, if not more,,,, dangerous than than the criminal mind in the fact that they are making it harder for the law abiding citizens to defend themselves and others. Most gun owning citizens were, in fact, military personal who would die for our flag. Well,,,, maybe,,,, just maybe,,,, someone will replace the last dead lightbulb in the chandeler. Have a fine Monday bro.

Now before the police toe lickers come out of the woodwork to defend their jackbooted heroes, consider what would have happened if an a pair of armed citizens had done EXACTLY the same thing. They would have been buried UNDER the jail.

I had thought the same thing (except without all the insults about police toe lickers).

It was NYC so any citizen shooting this guy would be in trouble before shooting started. Had this incident happened in a gun friendly area for citizens and a citizen defending himself had hit someone in the crossfire, I agree, we would have never heard the end of it. Untrained, Wyat Urps, gun toting vigilantes.... yea, it would have been bad.

Thank gawd it was just those incompetent jackbooted heroes that shot up the neighborhood.

Today's shooter reportedly used a 45 caliber handgun to end the life of a former co-worker, offering yet another example of how the ready availability of semiautomatic handguns that can be equipped with high-capacity ammunition magazines destroy lives and make everyone less safe.Violence Policy Center

It seems evident that the media has tried to throw a blanket over this quote, "When he saw something he said something and then turned it over to the professionals, Bloomberg said of the alert construction worker."

I guess a member of the NYPD can only get the "professional" tag attached by the good mayor after gunning down innocent bystanders.

Don't get me wrong, the LEOs initiated the appropriate action, it is just the execution of such action that needs to be corrected, not justified.

Video of the gun fight is on the Internet. The police came running up to the guy. He turned and pointed his .45 directly at them. If the .45 hadn't malfunctioned one of the officers would most likely be dead. The officers’ instincts took over and they fired until the bad guy hit the ground. It was probably 2 seconds between the time that the .45 was pointed at the officers and the gunman was on the ground.

Even though the officers already had their weapons drawn the whole incident developed so quickly that there was no time for them to develop any type of plan. It is pretty easy to be critical after the fact especially since the bullets they were using fragmented and the pieces flew into a crowd of bystanders; but watch the video and see what you think could have been done differently.

I hope whatever “lessons are learned” here do not further hamstring the police officers and make all of us less safe. It is possible that if the officers had somehow confronted the gunman in a different way that everyone could have been put at less risk. Once the shooting started in a crowded area bystanders were likely to get hurt no matter how much range time or previous experience the officers had.

I guess we get to disagree about whether better training or equipment would have made a difference. If they were using jhp bullets, and the bullets went out the other side, shot placement was bad or the bullets failed to function. Misses are the responsibility of the shooter and could/would cause fragmentation of the round.

16 rounds fired with 10(?) hits from what, 10 feet away, is just not acceptable.

I will say again, I do not fault their actions. I question their training and equipment. It is something that must be addressed by a department that sends their members out on crowded streets where the potential exists that innocent bystanders may be injured.

I know some LEOs can do better. Where I live we had a Deputy who encountered a guy who was randomly discharging a handgun around a neighborhood. When the guy trained the gun on the deputy, the deputy killed him with one shot. It can be done.

I don't actually disagree with you. There obviously are individuals who could have taken down the gunman with just a couple of well placed shots with no injured bystanders. Proper training no doubt aids in the development of such individuals.

True story... two soldiers one from North Vietnam and one from the United States were walking down the same trail approaching one another. They came to the opposite ends of a log that crossed a small stream. As they began to cross the log each looked up and saw the other. They both drew their weapons and fired. Within seconds their magazines were empty... each ran off screaming in the directions that they had come from. Neither was wounded.

A friend of mine was just down the trail from the experienced soldier who had been walking point. The soldier had proved himself on previous occasions and was known to be an excellent marksman. When the bullets are flying sometimes things don't go the way that you think that they should.

I am sure that the NYPD will be reviewing their policies and that there will be additional training to help their officers do better in similar future scenarios.

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